The Detroit Red Wings center Dylan Larkin races back on defense after breaking his stick during first period action against the Ottawa Senators Friday, December 14, 2018 at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Mich. Kirthmon F. Dozier, Detroit Free Press

The NHL schedule is relentless and the banged-up Red Wings seem to be wearing down under the weight of it.

They wanted to speed things up against Ottawa on Friday and probe the Senators' mistake-prone defense. But the ice turned into a mud bath for the Wings despite having two days off as they dragged through a 4-2 loss to the league's worst road team.

The game was tied at 2 after two periods. The Senators outshot them 13-6 the rest of the way.

"Yeah, they were hounding the puck but we just played a little too slow as well," Luke Glendening said of the third-period malaise.

Mark Stone scored at the 7:08 mark of the third and the Senators then went into a defensive shell. The Wings didn't have the legs to break through the barrier.

"They've got a good 1-3-1 in the neutral zone where they just don't give you much at all," coach Jeff Blashill said. "For me, we played too slow in the neutral zone once they got the lead."

Dylan Larkin, who extended his points streak to six consecutive games with a second-period goal, outlined ways the Wings could have overcome that strategy.

"They sat back with four guys stacked up on the blue line and made it hard for us," he said. "When that happens to us, we've got to generate speed on the walls and get the puck deep — chipping it and two guys flying towards it."

That requires focus and energy, neither of which the Wings had for the balance of the game. They got a boost midway through the second from rookie Michael Rasmussen, who stood up for Glendening after he was slammed into the boards by Ben Harpur. Rasmussen dropped his gloves for his first NHL fight and five-minute major.

"You don't really expect that from a 19-year-old," Glendening said. "I thanked him for it and said you don't have to do that. But it was definitely nice to see."

It was also nice to see Larkin ahead of the defense after coming out of the penalty box a few minutes later. Larkin scored the tying goal but the Wings lacked offensive punch from that point.

Blashill was a little baffled by the way his team came out of the locker room in the third.

"We, for no reason, especially on the back end, got slow," he said. "Then they scored and now they've got the momentum and they're really muddying the track at that point."

Some of the sluggishness can be attributed to mounting injuries. Blashill announced earlier in the day that defenseman Mike Green would miss the next 3-5 weeks with a lower-body injury. That subtracted the team's most productive defenseman from the lineup.

The team was already missing two of its top wings, Anthony Mantha and Darren Helm, and defenseman Danny DeKeyser. None of those players are expected back for a few more weeks.

The Wings have lost three of their last four and it could much uglier in the coming weeks. They play six of their next seven games on the road with a total of eight games remaining this month.

Those facts made losing to the Senators at Little Caesars Arena a little more painful.

"With two days off, we were looking for a better start for sure, especially with the way we played the last two games," Glendening said. "We battled back but we let it go and that's frustrating."